Raster image processing it the process of converting print data from a page description language to printer scan control data. Linear interpolation is often required in raster image processing, for example, in color conversion. In a raster image processing application, the amount of data to be interpolated for color conversion can be enormous. This interpolation will require significant amount of processing time. According to the prior art, dedicated hardware or a semiconductor application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) was used to speed up the execution performance of the application. Interpolation requires multiplication. Some the general purpose data processors do not support single cycle multiplication. Interpolation using one of these data processors can be very expensive in computation time.
The conventional linear interpolation method requires four addition/subtraction, one multiplication and one divide operations. The multiplication and divide operations are very expensive in terms of processing time. In case of s dedicated hardware implementation, the circuits required for multiplication and division are very numerous, require complex design and are slow in performance.